Beth Massi’s community roots run deep. Now a senior program manager on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft, Beth was introduced to community through the FoxPro forums when she needed some technical answers during her first job building business applications, straight out of college.

Beth Massi’s community roots run deep. Now a senior program manager on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft, Beth was introduced to community through the FoxPro forums when she needed some technical answers during her first job building business applications, straight out of college.

“There were no stupid questions,” Beth remembered. “It was such a welcoming community and it’s served as my model. As a community champion for Visual Studio LightSwitch at Microsoft, that’s the kind of culture I try to foster.”

After Microsoft bought FoxPro, Beth became more involved with Microsoft technologies—and the community. She worked as a contractor at Microsoft on the Visual FoxPro team, which she called “A dream come true.” In the meantime, her questions turned to answers and a level of community leadership that landed her two Architect MVP Awards, the only woman out of 100 MVPs in that expertise.

Today, as a Microsoft team member, her work with MVPs is collegial. “When you invite folks to come in and build a relationship with the engineering team, they’re more willing to step out there for you. When we released LightSwitch out into the wild last year, it was MVPs who really helped people get started working with it. They’re rock stars—they nurture the whole community.”

You can see Beth out in the community as a frequent speaker at various software development events. You also can find her on a variety of developer sites including MSDN Developer Centers, Channel 9 , and her blog http://www.bethmassi.com/ . Follow her on twitter @BethMassi